A little more personal history...
About me???...
Hmmmm...
Well, let's see...
I am a longtime, 30 plus year, (I started really young... hahahah... TRUE!) veteran of the indie music scene as well as, more recently the Children's and travel television/media industries.
Let me explain...
I have been playing guitar and attempting to satisfactorily write my own songs since I was 7, and by the time I was 14, I began my fledgling career playing in taverns and bars in and around my hometown of Buffalo, NY. This eventually led me to touring as I got a little older and that path eventually found me opening up a recording studio/record label of my own in the early 1990s.
Eventually...
Hmmmm...
Well, let's see...
I am a longtime, 30 plus year, (I started really young... hahahah... TRUE!) veteran of the indie music scene as well as, more recently the Children's and travel television/media industries.
Let me explain...
I have been playing guitar and attempting to satisfactorily write my own songs since I was 7, and by the time I was 14, I began my fledgling career playing in taverns and bars in and around my hometown of Buffalo, NY. This eventually led me to touring as I got a little older and that path eventually found me opening up a recording studio/record label of my own in the early 1990s.
Eventually...
... I moved the entire operation to Boston, Massachusetts on January 1st, 2000.
I set up shop there for 4 awesome years until I felt the urge to actually start publishing my children's books that I had been writing and illustrating for decades as a way to unwind.
After much research as to where in the heck one moves for such a thing... this led me a move to the San Francisco Bay area in the Summer of 2004 to start an Indie Children's Publishing company. But the fates had other ideas for me and at the time of its launch, in what seemed to be poor timing but ultimately was one of the best synchronicities of my entire career, if not my life, I transitioned the entire company into a local kids TV show of the past!
You see, YouTube had just started up that year and the Bay area was abuzz with how video would eventually take over the publishing world and one day on a walk along the beach in Alameda, where I was living at the time, the idea came to me to start a regional/heavily-retro-influenced TV show that looked as if it crawled right out of the early 70's.
It would be the type of kids TV show that I remembered form my days of early Sesame Street and Morgan Freeman era Electric Company!
After a few quick moves inland to the valley over the next year as the idea began to take shape, I ended up landing in a beautiful small ag town just above Sacramento launching the show within a few months of arrival and I never looked back.
As the first few shows were broadcast, kids and their parents alike started to fall in love with it and eventually, the show caught a small fire and changed the course of my career and life.
Jump far ahead and after a decade of creating and producing the show in Northern California, I felt like I had done enough and accomplished what I had set out to do and it was time for yet, another challenge.
In the following few years as my heart-voice grew stronger for a much-needed change, I had moved to Sonoma and was in the habit of taking these gorgeous Sunday walks through the town that would last most of the day.
It was on a few of these walks, in mid-to-late October of 2013, that my inner voice had simply grown to become too loud for me not to listen and I knew I had to head the call much like that voice called me to move out to Northern California in the first place.
My time there had ended.
It was time to come home.
Time for another journey.
My heart was telling me the direction was back east now and that I should bring all that hard-won and fought knowledge I had gained from running my shows and companies in both Boston and the SF Bay area back to my hometown of Buffalo NY and take up the cause here.
By Spring of 2014, I moved back home to Buffalo, and immediately set to starting an even more hyper-localized kids TV show than I had in Northern California!
And looking back on that adventure is more of a blur than the previous decade! I seemed to burn through 4 years quicker than I can even remember.
Through the 4 years back home here creating and producing these new kids shows, it started to become apparent that my true purpose was somehow... somewhere else creatively.
I felt that I had to find a way to blend all this creativity... blend my love of seeking questions and their answers, travel, cinematography and narrative... of my deep love of storytelling... into something that was wholly me! But me in a way I had not dared attempt ever before and couldn't quite see yet. ~AA
I set up shop there for 4 awesome years until I felt the urge to actually start publishing my children's books that I had been writing and illustrating for decades as a way to unwind.
After much research as to where in the heck one moves for such a thing... this led me a move to the San Francisco Bay area in the Summer of 2004 to start an Indie Children's Publishing company. But the fates had other ideas for me and at the time of its launch, in what seemed to be poor timing but ultimately was one of the best synchronicities of my entire career, if not my life, I transitioned the entire company into a local kids TV show of the past!
You see, YouTube had just started up that year and the Bay area was abuzz with how video would eventually take over the publishing world and one day on a walk along the beach in Alameda, where I was living at the time, the idea came to me to start a regional/heavily-retro-influenced TV show that looked as if it crawled right out of the early 70's.
It would be the type of kids TV show that I remembered form my days of early Sesame Street and Morgan Freeman era Electric Company!
After a few quick moves inland to the valley over the next year as the idea began to take shape, I ended up landing in a beautiful small ag town just above Sacramento launching the show within a few months of arrival and I never looked back.
As the first few shows were broadcast, kids and their parents alike started to fall in love with it and eventually, the show caught a small fire and changed the course of my career and life.
Jump far ahead and after a decade of creating and producing the show in Northern California, I felt like I had done enough and accomplished what I had set out to do and it was time for yet, another challenge.
In the following few years as my heart-voice grew stronger for a much-needed change, I had moved to Sonoma and was in the habit of taking these gorgeous Sunday walks through the town that would last most of the day.
It was on a few of these walks, in mid-to-late October of 2013, that my inner voice had simply grown to become too loud for me not to listen and I knew I had to head the call much like that voice called me to move out to Northern California in the first place.
My time there had ended.
It was time to come home.
Time for another journey.
My heart was telling me the direction was back east now and that I should bring all that hard-won and fought knowledge I had gained from running my shows and companies in both Boston and the SF Bay area back to my hometown of Buffalo NY and take up the cause here.
By Spring of 2014, I moved back home to Buffalo, and immediately set to starting an even more hyper-localized kids TV show than I had in Northern California!
And looking back on that adventure is more of a blur than the previous decade! I seemed to burn through 4 years quicker than I can even remember.
Through the 4 years back home here creating and producing these new kids shows, it started to become apparent that my true purpose was somehow... somewhere else creatively.
I felt that I had to find a way to blend all this creativity... blend my love of seeking questions and their answers, travel, cinematography and narrative... of my deep love of storytelling... into something that was wholly me! But me in a way I had not dared attempt ever before and couldn't quite see yet. ~AA
RSS Feed
